Sunday, June 19, 2016

Patrick Collinson on Brexit

It’s surprising to see something in the Guardian that is both pro-Brexit and anti-open borders, but times... well, they are a-changin’.

Last year I pointed out that open borders is, traditionally, an unhinged anarcho-capitalist and laissez faire libertarian idea (here and here) and mass immigration is the last fraud of neoliberalism (see here and here).
Of course, this is the elephant in the room. Few people on the left want to talk about it, because there is a Stalinist culture of political correctness on the left on this issue.

Quite simply, a viable left in the 21st century must be strongly opposed to open borders, because the issue is causing such voter discontent (and not just in Europe) that people will be driven to the populist right and far right in larger and larger numbers (here, here, here, here).

5 comments:

uhm LK i have a question lets say an organization like WTO hypothetically will force countries to eliminate trade deficits and trade surpluses.

by forcing the government of the country with trade surplus return it with its own currency.

an example:lets say UK have annual 1 billion dollars trade deficit with usa (hypothetically) in this case in the end of the year usa will have to give 1 billion dollars to UK so in the end there will be no trade deficit and no trade surplus.

my question is if in this case it will be easier for governments to realise full employment with no fear of balance of payment constraint?

and if in this case the governments will always be forced to avoid trade deficits and trade surpluses in this wouldnt it may eliminate the so called race to the bottom?

if i am not mistaken

because if lets say a big corporation wants to move a factory from country A to country B (because country b have lower corporate tax rate) with the goal to export back its production in this case it will force country B which using lower corporate taxes to attract new companies and facotries to pay more to country a anyway because of its improved current account situation?

also in this case it will make tax havens not profitable as well as far as i can see (since all the foreign currency they get they will have to return back in their currency).

Open borders stuff seems unnecessary as there are say two types of women: those with a weak reproductive instinct that were having sons because of pension investment reasons as pushed onto them by their grandmatriarchs, and those who had children because they had a strong reproductive instinct regardless. Currently all the women who are not overwhelmed by their reproductive instinct are choosing extinction via having no children or having less than replacement numbers, and only those who have difficulty resisting it are having lots of children, and that kind of reproductive urge is likely inheritable.